The old best Hitman game is the best new Hitman game, but not the new best Hitman game

Danish studio IO Interactive is best known for one thing: elaborate video games in which a bald man in a suit with a barcode on the back of his dome secretly kills people from all walks of life, all for a clandestine agency. The developer has been making games about this man, codenamed Agent 47, for 24 years since 2000. Hitman: Codename 47. They’ve gotten really good at it: the soft restart of 2016 Hitman and the trilogy that started it are among the best games released in recent memory, clockwork marvels of murderous possibilities and broad satire. However, the series reached its peak ten years earlier Hitman blood moneywhich just got a brand new version to play dubbed Hitman: Blood Money – Reprisal.

Ported by Feral Interactive, RevengeThe company’s main goal is twofold: Updating Blood money to take a closer look and play at the modern trilogy, now mentioned World of murderand bringing the game to portable platforms like smartphones and the Nintendo Switch (I played the Switch version, because I prefer to keep my smartphone games fast and casual). RevengeThe biggest, most noticeable changes are to the interface: there’s now a minimap, an Instinct mode that highlights objects and targets like in the newer Hitman games, and some tweaked controls. It’s all quite welcome for anyone who might find the less slick, slightly clunkier version of 2006’s Hitman a little difficult to get back into.

And if you are a purist for whom any form of concession offends you, Blood money is quite easy to obtain these days. The original PC release is available on Steam, console gamers can play it as part of 2019 Hitman HD enhanced collection for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One (which offers its own set of control and visual tweaks). Hitman: Absolution, and Xbox owners can Also pick it up as a standalone download from the Microsoft Store. There is no shortage of it Blood money to get.

This is ultimately a good thing, because while previous entries in the franchise were well received, Blood money is really where IO discovered Hitman. Within the levels, little stories unfold – not nearly to the extent of the modern Hitman games, which have full-fledged subplots that you can discover (or miss) – and little routines that you can empathize with, with the right disguise.

A sophisticated sandbox, full of little Rube Goldberg cause-and-effect sequences that the player can steadily execute, solving mini-puzzle after mini-puzzle until he is alone with his target. A world that begins to push back on your recklessness, with characters noticing when you act too out of pocket, making the game more difficult. And throwing objects to kill or disable targets, a mechanic that became a comedy goldmine around the time World of murder trilogy? That all came up for the first time Blood moneyBaby.

Not everything can withstand modern controls. Theatre, blood money, although too exaggerated to really take seriously, it still comes across as sloppy at times. The franchise has long used caricatures and genre tropes to keep its central premise of contract killing from veering into bad taste, but some choices have been made – such as the tutorial mission that focuses on a drug lord who employs an army of gangbangers led by of a Snoop Dogg parody – read as questionable at best and racist at worst.

But Blood moneyThe game’s missteps – and any game’s, really – are just as worth preserving as its successes. The easily accessible nature of the majority of the Hitman series, and IO’s relatively singular focus on the franchise, makes it one of the rare cases outside of franchises like Final Fantasy where you can play a studio’s output and not just make them can see repeating. their own ideas, but respond to changing social mores and adapt their presentation.

In 2006, this was the best Hitman had to offer. It is no more, but with the release of Revengeand likely quite a long wait before the next installment arrives, this is the best new Hitman game you can play right now.

Hitman: Blood Money – Reprisal is available on Apple iOS, Android and Nintendo Switch.